Water On Location

It’s not uncommon to ban disposable water bottles on set, this has recently been done by a unit production manager working on a feature film at Pinewood. It is important however to make sure adequate access to water is available, something that can be tricky with large crowds.

“For crew, the easiest method of providing water was to rent water coolers and set them up in convenient locations and to issue everyone with a personalised drinking bottle. Crew were largely compliant but there were instances where bottles were forgotten and paper cups used in their place. Although not the ideal outcome, this is better than an excess of a biodegradable material and still demonstrates positive behavioural change. Refilling all of the coolers and moving them from location to location (or simply out of shot) took up a significant amount of time and required the use of a pick-up van, but by the end of the production, crew got used to the idea of going to the water coolers to get a drink and initial grumbles subsided.

On days with large crowds the ‘no plastic water bottle policy’ became slightly more problematic. The solution was to hire ‘Thirst Packs’ water dispensing backpacks and a team of people to dispense water to crowds who couldn’t otherwise access water.”